Using certifi in urllib3

Question

I am new to python programming. Can anybody please tell if there will be any problem in fetching data from the web if I don't use certifi or any sort of certificate verification while using urllib3? I am getting warnings regarding the authenticity but data is fetched regardless of that. I was just wondering, if there is any possibility of any sort of error from any site. Also, does , not using certifi speed up data fetching?

Answer 1

If you forego verifying your HTTPS requests, then you have no way to verify that you're not a victim of a Man-In-The-Middle attack (and possibly other attacks). In effect, it would be equivalent to making an HTTP request (rather than HTTPS) in terms of security. If the data you're dealing with is not important, then that sacrifice could be okay.

In terms of performance ramifications, the difference should be very tiny especially compared to the network round trip in the first place. I would not consider it a factor.

Our Security Section has more details on your various options, including how to disable the warnings.